NEW YORK – One Battle After Another was named best feature on Dec 1 at the Gotham Awards, the official kick-off for the movie awards season, but it was an Iranian drama filmed in secret that was the big winner.

It Was Just An Accident, about former prisoners who kidnap a man they think tortured them, won best director and original screenplay for its film-maker Jafar Panahi, as well as best international feature.

The honour came not long after reports that Iran had handed down a sentence in absentia of a year in prison for 65-year-old Panahi, who was in the United States promoting his Oscar-hopeful film.

The sentence includes a two-year travel ban over “propaganda activities” and prohibition of Panahi from membership in any political or social groups.

In 2010, he was banned from making movies and from leaving the country after supporting mass anti-government protests a year earlier and making a series of films that critiqued the state of modern Iran.

Convicted of “propaganda against the system”, he was sentenced to six years in jail but served only two months behind bars before being released on bail.

In 2022, he was arrested in connection with protests by a group of film-makers, but was released nearly seven months later.

He was allowed to make his latest film, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May, but because he did not want to submit it to the authorities for approval, he opted to shoot in secret.

A co-production between Iran, France and Luxembourg, It Was Just An Accident has been selected by France as its official nomination for the Academy Awards, and is widely expected to make the shortlist for the Best International Feature Film at the gala event in March 2026.

One Battle After Another is American writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s tale of a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio), his daughter (Chase Infiniti) and the soldier (Sean Penn) hunting for them. It was the only win for the much-lauded movie, though i...